


Analyzing the "Reckoning"

by merryghoul



Category: Burn Notice
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Meta, Nonfiction, Season/Series 07, Ship Manifesto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:09:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22902967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/pseuds/merryghoul
Summary: An essay on the final episode of Burn Notice, "Reckoning," and some of the events leading up to that episode.
Relationships: Fiona Glenanne/Michael Westen
Kudos: 2
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Analyzing the "Reckoning"

**Michael and Fiona's "marriage."** One of the cast members said (not sure who said this, but it was said, and the following is a paraphrase) on the night of "Sea Change" the scene with James, Michael and Sonya on the boat, talking about how Michael was going to inherit James' organization, was like the "marriage" of Michael and Sonya.

I was thinking if the boat scene in "Sea Change" was Michael and Sonya's "wedding," the roof scene was Michael and Sonya's "annulment." Fiona objects to this "wedding" and Michael by going to him on the roof as a last ditch attempt to stop him from taking over James' organization. (Even Fiona's hand on her head when she arrives on the roof can be seen as a subtle attempt to object to Michael's takeover.) Sonya arrives after Fiona, threatening to kill her to save the takeover.

Michael agrees with Fiona; he knows he's not meant to run James' organization. He kills Sonya to spare Fiona's life; this is consistent to Michael not harming women unless they threaten Fiona (like the gun butt to the head/neck of the female bodyguard from "Better Halves"). Fiona kills some random guy running onto the roof after James orders his men at the building to kill Michael and Fiona. I see Sonya and the random guy's deaths as an exchange of bodies, like people exchanging vows or rings during a wedding ceremony. With the "exchange of bodies," Michael and Fiona are "wed," and their brief embrace on the rooftop, followed by them running off the roof hand in hand, seems to confirm that.

Since the show is selling Michael and Fiona's relationship as dysfunctional (e.g. the two crying over their first meeting at the Black Sand Pub in Ireland, where Fiona pulled a gun on him, while Fiona was in prison; the two making out after she puts a bomb under a car, also in Ireland, et. al.), an exchange of bodies on a rooftop to mark a symbolic marriage isn't a far-fetched idea for me come up with. (Note the Black Sand Pub stuff was canon established in season 6, which retconned Fiona and Michael meeting in battle in previous seasons.)

 **Michael and Fiona's "retirement."** There are a few lines from a couple of season four episodes from _Burn Notice_ that seem to reference Michael and Fiona's fate at the end of _Burn Notice._

The first were lines Sam said in the season 4 finale "Last Stand." "You know, what you have with Mike is special," he said to Fiona at one point during the episode. "There's no question. But I don't think you get involved with someone like Michael Westen, hoping he's gonna buy a house on the lake, settle down." The two don't obviously settle down by a lake, but their Irish cottage is close to a peaceful house on the lake to settle down with Charlie. But before the "Reckoning," maybe it's partially Sam's words that lead Fiona to Carlos.

The second was from the episode "Hot Property," the one where Natalie (the thief that got away in season 3) shows up to try to get Michael and the team to help her steal a gaseous weapon. Fiona's building a booby trap with a gas that smells like a natural gas leak, and she's putting said booby trap in a stroller and pretending as if it was her baby at Madeline's. (Fiona needed somewhere more private than a hotel room, where she was staying at the time after Jesse blew her place up, to make said booby trap.) Madeline shows up because she can smell the booby trap. She tells Fiona "You're not going to get baby fever from me. Michael's too busy running around with a gun to take care of hamster, much less a child." And, of course, Fiona and Michael end up tending to a child.

Then there's the introduction of Charlie. It's possible Nix created Nate to be a version of Michael if he had not become a spy—got into trouble, tried to start a few businesses that went awry, went to Vegas, had a quickie wedding to a complete stranger and had a child, only to try and redeem himself on one of his brother's missions. While Nate's life hurt no one but his own, Michael's life was one that culminated in the losses of several lives (and a lot of property damage) before he decided to quit the spy business for the sake of his long-time, on-off girlfriend and his nephew. Had Michael become James' heir, there would've been more lives lost, including Michael's.

There's a possibility Charlie was invented for Michael and Fiona to raise together once the two had finally gotten their problems ironed out. If so, I wish the kid had more lines other than sleeping and hugging Madeline. If Charlie's about three years old, unless he has some developmental problems, he wouldn't be quiet around Madeline, Michael and their friends. If not, then Charlie in the seventh season does feel like pandering to the fandom (and some media, [like TVLine, sort of](http://tvline.com/2012/11/14/blind-item-pregnancy-tv-series/#!1/blinditem300/)) that wanted Michael and Fiona with a baby by the end of the series.

There are a couple of scenes in "Desperate Times." One is the scene where Michael wakes up to find Fiona by a window, and he says the last time he saw the sky that color of blue is when they were by the Irish Sea. The other scene is when Michael and Fiona are working on the spark plug explosive. Michael says he misses Ireland; Fiona says she doesn't need Ireland, she only needs _him._ (That's also the scene where Michael promises Fiona he'd leave the CIA after the Tom Card affair, but he didn't, opting to get back in the CIA to save his friends from imprisonment instead.)

And then there's the opening scene from "Means & Ends," where Michael and Fiona are sitting by a rocky beach. Michael asks Fiona if she'd like to have afternoons to savor without any crazy stuff happening. (Fiona doesn't answer this.) Michael's about to ask another question about something he'd like to do with her, presumably after the Tom Card affair, but it's interrupted by Tyler Gray. Michael might've been close to asking Fiona to go to Ireland to live in that moment. And it would've worked, since Michael and his team "died" in Panama, but that first faked death didn't last, unlike the faked deaths in the finale.

In the old _Miami Chronicle_ building, there's an exchange before Michael and Fiona get into a gunfight with James' men and James. Fiona's still wondering if Michael's trying to get himself killed because he's still angry with himself for believing James. He strokes her face and tells her "I want to live. Maybe more than I ever have." Michael convinces Fiona he's ready to leave the CIA, even if it's through something extreme like faking his death. It's what she's been waiting to hear after Michael said he'd leave the CIA after the Nate/Tom Card debacle back in season six.

It's easy for Fiona to go along with faking her death in the _Miami Chronicle_ bombing. She's lived a life similar to Michael's, where countless people have gotten hurt because of her actions and others hate her for those same actions. In one episode (yes, I don't know the episode again), it's mentioned that Fiona's wanted in ten countries for unknown things. Like Michael, she has a notice out on her—[an Interpol notice,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpol_notice) in an Interpol file. It's marked orange, which lists her as someone that sends threats through disguised weapons and parcel bombs. There are people in Ireland that have grudges against her and would like to see her dead. Fiona could be deported if she's arrested in CIA custody (after the whole Tom Card debacle). And MI6 could do things to Fiona's family if she's in their custody. For Michael and Fiona to live in peace away from all their enemies, they have to be dead in Miami.

As for Charlie? If Charlie's mother wasn't ready to take Charlie back in custody with her, Charlie may have ended up going into child protective services. And given the team's numerous arrests and whatnot, it might've been impossible for any one of them to try and adopt Charlie. It would be easier for Michael's team to make the City of Miami believe Charlie died with Madeline and some of James' goons in an explosion than to go through the legal hassle of being his guardian.

In summary: I assume the team came to the conclusion it would be easier for Sam and Jesse to give themselves up to the CIA to allow Michael, Fiona and Charlie to escape and fake their deaths, since Sam escaped from the _Chronicle_ building before the blast and Jesse wasn't even at the building,

 **Michael and Fiona's cottage in the snow.** Maybe the snow cottage is a flash-forward? And the registration plate on the SUV in front of the cottage is very similar to [a registration plate on an Irish car,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Ireland) so there's that. And there's the annoying fake Irish flute music as well.

Anyway, I'm sure the cottage is a callback to Fiona's snow globes, the ones she started collecting when she started doing jobs for other people around the world. The cottage is like a scene in Fiona's snow globe: idyllic, frozen in time, surrounded by snow. But unlike the snow globes she collected over the years (and lost because of the loft explosion), the cottage is real and the people Fiona loves, Michael and now Charlie, are living in it with her.

 **The "I used to be a spy" line.** For years, Michael's been explaining his story to the audience, but with no explanation to who he was talking to, except for that one time Michael was talking to Carla about the events of season two. Judging from the ending, it seems like he was talking to an older Charlie about everything he's went through, and on Fiona's suggestion, not sugarcoating it or covering it up. And it's also hinted that _Fiona,_ not Michael, came up with the "My name is Michael Westen. I used to be a spy, until..." lines from the show's introduction. (And those are lines that easily could've been lost, had the fan voting gone in the way to change the sixth season intros to shots of the characters and files with their names on it.)

 **The "angel" motif.** I don't think it's a coincidence that a couple of angel-themed motifs (the "Be brave, little angel" line and Massive Attack's "Angel") pop up this season. I feel it riffs off of Fiona trying to stop Michael from getting too involved in his CIA mission to investigate Burke/James & Sonya.

Fiona almost got killed by a terrorist, fell off the side of a building ~~into a CGI abyss~~ and suffocated on ~~CGI~~ smoke), but I find it interesting Fiona saved Michael from something worse than death: being alone, away from his family and friends, the people who had his back ever since he was shipped back to Miami after he was burned. It's not a damsel in distress situation, but Fiona stopping Michael from controlling his own group of burned agents is just as huge as Michael saving Fiona from falling to her death. Michael may have saved Fiona from perishing physically, but Fiona stops him from perishing emotionally and spiritually. In a sense, she is like the "angel" in Massive Attack's "Angel," neutralizing evil.


End file.
